Monday, March 25, 2013

Thoughts on Suzanne Somers

At the first of the month, Ruth noted the sad passing of actress Bonnie Franklin who was most famous for playing Ann Romano on the long running CBS sitcom One Day At A Time.

A regular reader asked me if I would note that actress Suzanne Somers issued a statement March 1st about Franklin: "My first appearance ever on a sitcom was on One Day At A Time.
I was very nervous and Bonnie Franklin was very gracious and kind. She
was very involved in notes and creativity and I watched with awe. Her
passing is way too soon. RIP. You will be missed."

Monday, March 25, 2013. Chaos and violence continue, John Kerry visits
Iraq, calls for Anbar and Nineveh to vote in next month's elections
continue, Dan Choi prepares to go on trial this week, and more.

This week, Iraq War veteran Lt Dan Choi again goes on trial. Margaret Cho (Huffington Post) notes:He
is an Arabic linguist -- the kind of soldier desperately needed there
-- yet because he is gay and proud and refused to stay silento n the
matter of the military's systematic homophobia, he was unfairly
discharged and now has to stand trial. His work as a gay activist led
to the eventual demise of Don't Ask Don't Tell which allowed LGBT folks
to serve openly in the military, and in a cruelly ironic twist of fate,
is still being asked to pay for the "crime" of being gay.

Three years after Choi’s
handcuffing protests, the US Federal Attorney’s Office
refuses to dismiss the charges against him. The prosecution
is being pursued by Assistant US Attorney, Angela S.
George.Generally, White House protestors are
arrested and required to pay $100 fine to a municipal court,
the equivalent of a parking ticket in the District of
Columbia. Instead, in this case, the US Attorney’s Office
is invoking a seldom-used federal level criminal charge
called "Failure to Obey".Lt Choi retorts:“The charge is baseless. It assumes traffic was
blocked, but there is no traffic to block on 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue. The main reason for this charge is to
prevent me from re-joining the military, to paint me as
simply disobedient. It prevents my rejoining (the military)
in a vindictive waste of resources. I stand trial to assert
my rights and the rights of all to be treated equally under
the law.”Choi’s case is the first time since
anti-Iraq war protester Cindy Sheehan was prosecuted, that a
protestor has been tried federally for demonstrating at the
White House. National Security Agency
whistleblower, Navy and Air Force veteran Thomas Drake
remarked: "This is yet another sad example of the federal
government overstepping their bounds against critics they do
not like."

Today, Lela Gilbert (Huffington Post) notes a conversation she had recently in Jerusalem with an Iraqi Jew:He told me that he and his family had fled Baghdad in the late 1970s,
driven out of Iraq like hundreds of thousands of other Jews from Muslim
lands between 1948 and the early 1970s. They escaped ever-increasing
dangers -- matters of life and death. He said, "The Christians saw what
happened to us. But they didn't read the writing on the wall about what
would happen to them."

Yesterday, Alsumaria reported a Christian in Kirkuk was released after his family paid the kidnappers a ransom. Last week, The Economist noted,
"The lot of Iraq’s Christian population is particularly glum. Though a
steady trickle had been leaving for decades, the exodus became a flood
after the American invasion in 2003, when radical Islamists unleashed a
sectarian onslaught against Shia Muslims, Christians and others. The
ferocity of attacks such as the one against the church of Our Lady of
Salvation in Baghdad in 2010, which left at least 58 Christians dead,
speeded the departure of many more. In the past decade as many as
two-thirds of Iraq’s 1.5m Christians are thought to have emigrated."
Iraqi Christians make up a significant number of Iraq's refugees who've
left the country. In addition, many of those who have stayed have left
their homes and moved to northern Iraq (the Kurdistan Regional
Government) in an attempt to find safety. Rana told Annabel Roberts (NBC News) last week,
"I didn't like Saddam Hussein, but he didn't bother the Christians. He
was a dictator. When he went, the gangs came from everywhere." So she
sought asylum in London:In a pew near Rana sat Wasseem, a 26-year-old who arrived in the U.K.
five months ago. The murder of his friend Rariq haunts him, Wasseem said
through a translator. Rariq, also a Christian, was a driver for
American forces in Baghdad and was kidnapped on his way to meet Wasseem.
Rariq’s dismembered body was returned to his family five days later.

Television
is particularly difficult. With almost every bombing, the government imposes a
new layer of regulations. Police and soldiers who used to talk freely now need
permission from the Interior or Defense Ministry. Being allowed into a press
conference at the prime minister's office involves handing over your watch as
well as your pen and notepad. Tape recorders are completely out of the
question.
Even entering
the parliament building now requires prior written permission, and both
cosmetics and over-the-counter drugs are considered a security risk and
confiscated at the entrance. Once you get in the building, parliamentary
session themselves still aren't open to the media. The press gallery was closed
years ago, "for security reasons," and the only recordings of proceedings are
an edited, delayed television feed.
For the
first time since the Saddam era, there are official travel restrictions. The government
recently announced that foreign journalists need prior Iraqi Army permission to
travel to the restive Anbar Province, where Sunni protesters have been staging
regular demonstrations against the government. Journalists for foreign news
organizations trying to cover the
ongoing protests have been stopped at Iraqi Army checkpoints. Some have been arrested.

Yesterday, Iraq had a prominent visitor. Jane Arraf Tweets some thoughts on the visit:

I believe Sohar Hamudi with Amar-Iraqiya
is an Iraqi journalist and US Secretary of State John Kerry. He is one
of three reporters Kerry took questions from at the US Embassy in
Baghdad on Sunday. In response to Hamudi's question, Kerry's response
included:

With respect to demonstrations,
we believe very strongly that every citizen has the right to have their
voice heard. And under the constitution of Iraq, people have a right to
be able to affiliate, to express any political view, and nobody should
be penalized for that.So we urge people to demonstrate peacefully if they choose to
demonstrate. We do not want to see, nor do we advocate anything but
peaceful demonstration, but we urge the government to respond to those
demonstrations in an appropriate way – not with violence, not with
repression, but rather with the openness that a democracy merits. The
country will be stronger for people having the right to be able to
express their views in a peaceful way.

Along with Hamudi, Kerry took a question from Paul Richter (Los Angeles Times) and Anne Gearan (Washington Post). Hamudi was the only one to ask about Iraq proper. Richter and Gearan's concerns were Syria.

The
protests have been going on since December 21st. Approximately 10% of
the country has participated in the protests. What are they about?

The
same thing that happened in 2011. We'll do this as briefly as
possible. March 2010 saw Iraqis go to the polls and vote in
parliamentary elections. Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law came in second
to Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya. Per the Constitution, Iraqiya was due to have
the prime minister-designate. That's a 30-day position. They name
someone to be prime minister but he or she has only 30 days to put
together a full cabinet. Failure to do so within 30 days means someone
else is named prime minister-designate. Nouri refused to step down as
prime minister. He refused to let the process go forward. For eight
months after the election -- with the support of the US White House --
he brought things to a standstill. The whole time the US government was
leaning on the political blocs, telling them Nouri could go 8 months
more, telling them if they cared about Iraq, they'd be the grown ups and
they'd let things move forward. That's when the US-brokered Erbil
Agreement gets introduced. It's a legal contract. The US says it's
legal binding. Give Nouri a second term as prime minister and the Kurds
can get Articel 140 implemented. All sorts of deals were written in to
get the political blocs to agree to go along.

Nouri used this
contract to get a second term. But he refused to honor the promises he
made in the contract. He instead initiated a power-grab. This lead to
the 2011 protests that started in January and got really active in
February. The Iraqi people were tired of not having potable water and
dependable electricity, they were tired of the lack of jobs, of the
'disappeared' in the so-called Iraqi 'justice' system, they were tired
of the lack of jobs. They took to the streets. Nouri got them to leave
the streets by promising if they gave him 100 days he would fix
everything.

Nouri lies and Nouri stalls. He did so to get his
second term. He did so to send the protesters packing. After 100 days,
nothing had changed. This led the Kurds, Iraqiya and cleric and
movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr to publicly call for the Erbil Agreement
to be implemented. Tensions continued to build. There is no progress
for the Iraqi people. On top of that, fall 2012 saw reports emerge that
made the Iraqi 'justice' system even more disgusting: Women and girls
were being tortured and raped in Iraqi prisons and detention centers.

Iraq's increasingly powerful Shi'ite Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki,
started accumulating power following the 2010 parliamentary elections.
He secured a
second term -- after a drawn out eight-month power struggle - by
promising to share power with other political blocs, including Iraqiyya
(a more secular
party that has attracted Sunni support) and the Kurds. That promise
quickly disintegrated. Instead, Al-Maliki preferred to assert personal
control over the
security forces, target senior Sunni officials with arrest, and
otherwise eviscerate many of the safeguards enshrined in the Iraqi
Constitution. His
actions ignited widespread protests in Sunni majority provinces in
December 2012 that continue as of writing. Today, many in Iraq's
Parliament fear that he
is a dictator-in-the-making.

Iraq's
Finance Minister Rafei al-Essawi said Thursday that "a militia force"
raided his house, headquarters and ministry in Baghdad and kidnapped
150 people, and he holds the nation's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki,
responsible for their safety. Members
of the al-Essawi's staff and guards were among those kidnapped from the
ministry Thursday, the finance minister said. He also said that his
computers and documents were searched at his house and headquarters. He
said the head of security was arrested Wednesday at a Baghdad checkpoint
for unknown reasons and that now the compound has no security.

By
4 January, demonstrations spread to Anbar, Salah ad-Din, Ninewa and
Diyala Provinces and in northern Baghdad [. . .] On 6 January, the
demonstrators issued a list of demands, focusing largely on the
implementation of the rule of law and governance, including the
suspension or abolition of article 4 of the Anti-Terrorism Law,
parliamentary adoption of the General Amnesty Law and abolition or
review of the Justice and Accountability Law. They denounced structural
problems within the overburdened judiciary and alleged corruption in
law enforcement. The demonstrators demanded the immediate release of
all prisoners who had already been released by the court or had yet to
be charged, and women who were in custody in lieu of their kin.

Let's
stop there. In lieu of their kin? Article IV allows Nouri's forces to
go after a suspected 'terrorist' and, if not able to secure him or her,
to grab his family members -- children, parents, spouses, you name it.
Back to the report.They also called for the transfer of
women detained on criminal charges to their respective provinces as well
as investigations into human rights violations, specifically alleged
torture, confessions obtained under duress and abuse of female
detainees. The protests led to the temporary closure of crossing points
on the border with Jordan and the Syrian Arab Republic (Al-Walid,
Trebil and Rabia) between 9 and 18 January.

The demands from tens of thousands of Iraqi demonstrators on human
rights issues and access to basic services must be urgently addressed by
the Government, the top United Nations envoy in the country said today,
warning that not doing so would increase volatility in the streets.
Since late December, thousands of demonstrators in Iraq’s western
provinces have taken to the streets to voice their grievances. While the
Government has taken measures to address some of their concerns, the
Secretary-General’s Representative for Iraq, Martin Kobler, stressed
that more needs to be done, especially in the area of human rights.
“[Demonstrators] feel unprotected, insecure, and excluded,” Mr.
Kobler told the Security Council as he presented the latest report by
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the activities of the UN Assistance
Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). “Around the country, we listened to the
demonstrators’ frustrations. Over time, they spoke more harshly and
proposed more radical solutions.”

Kerry's remarks quoted earlier are the strongest
remarks any US official has made thus far regarding the attacks on the
protesters.
Al-Manar notes
of Kerry's visit, "The top US diplomat will also push for Iraq's
government to better
engage with the country’s minority, which has been protesting since
December." Yet, US commentators -- not unlike the two US reporters who
were allowed to ask questions of Kerry -- can only obsess over Syria --
for examples, check out Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com), Victor Hanson (National Review) (Libertarian and right-winger -- and here on the left? We have talking points from the White House! We don't have time to cover things that actually happen!). How sad that their obsessions blind them to actual news.

Alsumaria notes
that Kerry asked Prime Minister and Thug Nouri al-Maliki to reconsider his
decision to postpone provincial voting in Anbar Province and Nineveh
Province. April 20th, provinicial elections are supposed to be held.
Nouri's said Anbar and Nineveh must wait six months due to violence.
Then it was due to fraud. Paul Richter (Los Angeles Times) reports the newest reason given: "Maliki said Sunni demonstrations made it unsafe for election workers."

All Iraq News reports Nouri is denying rumors that he's changed his mind on the postponements. National Iraqi News Agency notes
that following his meeting with Kerry yesterday, Speaker of Parliament
Osama al-Nujaifi issued a statement declaring the postponement of Anbar
and Nineveh to be unconstitutional and illegal. Alsumaria notes that al-Nujaifi is meeting with the leaders of the various blocs in Parliament today to discuss the postponements.

This is what John Kerry stated publicly in Baghdad yesterday about the elections:

Fundamental to any democracy anywhere is an election. And the United
States is working very closely with the Iraqi electoral commission and
with the United Nations in order to ensure the will of the Iraqi people
can be reflected through the provincial elections this next month, and
then, of course, through the national elections next year. In my
meetings today, I stressed our concern that local elections in two
provinces have been delayed, and I urged the cabinet to revisit this
decision. And the Prime Minister said it was appropriate to revisit it
with the cabinet.

[. . .]

Well, there are two provinces I mentioned, both in Ninewa and in
Anbar, where the election – the provincial election has been suspended.
And from the perspective of the United States, we strongly urge the
Prime Minister to take this issue to the cabinet and to see if it can be
revisited, because we believe very strongly that everybody needs to
vote simultaneously. The fact is that while security has been put
forward as a rationale for that postponement, no country knows more
about voting under difficult circumstances than Iraq.The first election here was conducted under the most extraordinarily
difficult circumstances, but Iraqis came out and voted. So we believe
very strongly that all of the countries should vote at the same time in
these provincial elections, and we hope that the Prime Minister, through
his cabinet, will be able to revisit this issue. There is still time
for that election to take place in those provinces.

We'll
do some more on Kerry's one-day visit in tomorrow's snapshot. I'll
note that the biggest surprise of some accompanying him was how out in
the cold Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq is and how that includes
within al-Mutlaq's own National Dialogue Front.

Nouri al-Maliki: . . . the situation in Iraq now is based on a
Constitution that actually dispels the fears and the need for
sectarianism and racism. The Constitution is the first ever that Iraq
knew and through this Constitution the political process is governed
where power is peacefully changed. The Constitution puts an end to
coups and tanks rolling in the street to change the government.

In other news, UPI reported Saturday, "The head of a Kurdish separatist group in Iraq declared a cease-fire
in its long-running conflict with neighboring Turkey, starting Saturday." Hurriyet added:

“We declare a cease-fire starting on March 23. If the [Turkish]
Parliament and government do the legal groundwork for a commission, we
could withdraw [from Turkey],” Karayılan is quoted as saying in the
video broadcast by the Germany-based Kurdish TV channel Nuce TV and
published on a website known to have close ties with the PKK. Karayılan
also guaranteed that unless PKK militants were attacked, no assault would be launched, according to daily Hürriyet’s report.

Aaron Hess (International Socialist Review) described the PKK in 2008,
"The PKK emerged in 1984 as a major force in response to Turkey's
oppression of its Kurdish population. Since the late 1970s, Turkey has
waged a relentless war of attrition that has killed tens of thousands of
Kurds and driven millions from their homes. The Kurds are the world's
largest stateless population -- whose main population concentration
straddles Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria -- and have been the victims of
imperialist wars and manipulation since the colonial period. While
Turkey has granted limited rights to the Kurds in recent years in order
to accommodate the European Union, which it seeks to join, even these
are now at risk."

Sunday at Third, Ava and I called out the latest attempted Circle Jerk.
The Circle Jerk is where a group bands together to pretend like a
non-story should be consuming our attention. Failed journalist Greg
Mitchell was asked to write a piece for the Washington Post's Outlook section about the broad themes of the mea culpa. He failed to do so, turning in instead a bad laundry list
about how A admitted being wrong, B admitted being wrong, C admitted
being wrong . . . It didn't even qualify as a bad column. It was just a
list. It was not worthy of publication in the Outlook section.

Greg was never really a journalist. He wrote for Crawdaddy
where his sexism flourished so well he became an editor. He was a joke
then and only those too young to remember the time are impressed with
his past credits. He's had trouble adjusting to new media where his
sexism gets called out. He's had less trouble with regards to errors
because he just vanishes them without any correction notice at his
blog. What he wrote was almost good enough for self-publishing on his
blog -- or in one of his sad little, self-published e-books. Well, not
so sad. A number of us back in the day, a number of us women who were
offended by the trash he promoted and the way he disrespected us,
knowing one day the bastard would get his. And he has. And that's not
sad at all.

The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade has since picked up on Miller’s
blog, and has responded with a piece of his own. With that case,
though, Greenslade sided with something the Post surely wouldn’t be
willing to print as a headline. His piece is called “Washington
Post accused of censorship.”The Post has since fired back, issuing a statement saying they
thought Miller’s piece “offered too much of a rundown of the
apologies, rather than drawing many broader analytical points or
insights. So we decided against running it. We expressed this to
Mr. Mitchell and offered him a kill fee. He expressed his
disagreement.”

Roy Greenslade wrote about it today. The
Washington Post issued their response yesterday. You can check that by
using the link to Michael Calderone's Sunday Huffington Post piece which
quotes the Post's statement.

Now Greg's taken to The Nation website
to continue to play ultimate victim. He's not a victim. He's a bad
writer. For a long time, in the entertainment press, his having a penis
outweighed him being a bad writer. Times change. Thing is, all of us,
all of the women he objectified and ridiculed for nearly a decade?

We
sucked it up. We weren't little bitches whining in public. We weren't
little cry babies. We knew we had talent and we knew a sexist pig
attacked us because we had talent. Now the same little piggie
squeals because times have changed and he can't sell his bad writing
anymore. It's really not all that surprising. As Joss Stone sings:

I am what I am, you did what you didI'm glad I'm not a sinner baby, cause here's a twist You are what you are, I saw what I sawKarma's your master, and you're the bitch-- "Karma," written by Joss Stone, David A. Stewart, Martina McBride, Brad Warren and Brett Warren, first appears on Joss' LP1

Greg
can try to churn up the Circle Jerk all he wants but the reality is
he's a bad writer who has a karmic debt that's being called in. Reality
is that Greg's spent a week now praising himself -- which seems
perfectly naturally to pigs, they think that's normal -- when he refused
to write the brave war resisters and he refused to write about what's
going on in Iraq today. As long as Greg Mitchell can write about Greg
Mitchell, he's got a ton to say. It's just that none of it has been
worth reading. A few commentators are trying to pitch Greg's piece
against another Post piece and insisting the difference is the paper ran
the piece that said the media really wasn't responsible. The paper did
run that piece. To its embarrassment and shame. That's utter
fiction. But if you're going to compare and contrast, there's another
difference -- that fictional piece? It's well written. It's not a
laundry list. Comparing the two pieces doesn't do Greg any good, it just
points out how useless he is -- he couldn't even compete with that.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (3/18/13) - On March 14, the day before the Trustees at San
Francisco Community College District handed in the report that may decide the
life or death of California's largest community college, student and faculty
marchers headed downtown to City Hall. A sinuous line of hundreds of chanting,
banner-waving people stopped traffic on Mission Street, the main artery through
the city barrio. Their mood combined equal parts of desperation at the prospect
of the closure of the school, and anger and defiance at the kinds of changes
that authorities are demanding to keep it open.

Shanell Williams,
urban studies major and president of the Associated Students at SFCC, told a
rally at the march's starting point on the college's Mission campus that the
required changes are part of a larger effort to turn students into commodities,
and move towards the privatization of education. "Next year students will be
affected by the Student Success Act," she warned. "Every student will have to
have an education plan, there will be repeat limits, and a 90-credit cap on the
Board of Governors fee waiver [that allows poor and working class students to
petition to waive tuition fees]. Now is the time when they need more student
services and support from the administration, but they're cutting part time
counselors and taking other actions that will be even greater barriers."